国立情報学研究所 - ディジタル・シルクロード・プロジェクト
『東洋文庫所蔵』貴重書デジタルアーカイブ

Finds in
tomb
Ast. vi. 4.

The badly damaged remains of a single body were found in a corner, where they had been
thrown in a heap by those who had previously made a thorough search of the tomb for valuables.
This accounted for the broken condition of the articles, most of them of wood, here recovered.
Among these are wooden figures, rudely carved and painted, of men and women, vi. 4. 03–8
(Pl. CIV) ; pieces of furniture models with legs ending in a lion's claw, vi. 4. 023, 027–8 (Pl. XCI) ;
fragments of a model carriage, vi. 4. 010–11, 019–20, 022 (Pl. XCIV), &c. The circular wooden
boxes, vi. 4. 024–5 (Pl. XCIV), deserve mention on account of their painted ornamentation. An
article of particular interest is the excellently worked shoe of silk tapestry, vi. 4. 01 (Pl. XCIII),
woven to shape. Its design consists of three bands, each composed of oblong panels showing
a standing goose with wings extended, both panels and figures executed in counterchanging colours.
Other bands with small Chinese characters are worked in at the toe.

Textile
remains
from tomb
Ast. vii. 1, 2.

The tombs Ast. vii. 1, 2, which were next examined, lay to the east and west respectively of
the ruined structure situated approximately between the two main portions of the Astāna cemetery
(Pl. 31). In clearing the approach trench of vii. 1 two fragments of paper in Brāhmī script and
probably Kuchean language were found. They were the only specimens of non-Chinese manuscript
found at Astāna, and looked as if they had been torn from some documents. The tomb chamber
contained three bodies ; two of them, still in fair preservation, though thrown down from the
platform, had shrouds made up of plain cotton and undyed silk ; the third, which may have been
stripped by the plunderers, lay completely broken up in a corner. The fragments of striped or
painted silk vii. 1. 02, 03, 05 came from this body. The heads of the other two corpses retained
face-covers made, as usual, of a piece of polychrome figured silk and a frill of plain silk around it.
In vii. 1. 06 (Pl. LXXX) the figured silk shows a fine lozenge lattice pattern in a modification
of 'Sasanian' design that is specially interesting on account of the heart-shapes decorating the
border. Underneath this a pair of silver spectacles covered the eyes. The feet of this body were
cased in shoes of lacquered canvas, with upturned toe and well made, as the description of vii. 1.
07 (Pl. XCIII) shows. The face-cover of the other body, vii. 1. 01 (Pl. LXXVII), was made of
a piece of figured silk, also 'Sasanian' in design but coarsely woven. Some torn pieces of paper
with Chinese writing on them were also found near the bodies.

Stucco
figures from
Ast. vii. 2.

The tomb vii. 2, situated about 200 yards to the north-west of the ruined structure, was one
of those which had been previously searched by Mashik and in which he remembered having seen
clay figures. It proved, as seen in the plan (Pl. 34), more elaborate in construction than any of those
examined, comprising two tomb chambers with platforms and, besides a front passage, a square
anteroom flanked by two additional rooms over 7 feet square. The conical roofs of the tomb
chambers proper rose to the unusual height of 11 feet. These chambers were found empty but for
badly broken remains of bodies, which seemed to have been wrapped in plain shrouds of cotton and
silk. Fragments of Chinese paper documents, which probably came from their coffins, were lying in
the outer tomb chamber and also in the adjoining anteroom. Most of these fragments, according
to information kindly given by Dr. Lionel Giles, are from official reports. Some bear seal impres-
sions in red, but none appear to show a definite date. The two side rooms flanking the latter
once held a considerable number of clay figures of the same type as described from Ast. iii. 2,
but almost all these figures had suffered much damage at the hands of those who successively
searched this tomb for valuables. Among those still fit for removal may be mentioned the fragment
of a finely modelled dragon, vii. 2. 01 (Pl. CIII) ; the head of a demon, of grotesque human type,
vii. 2. 03 (Pl. CI), humorously treated ; several horses, vii. 2. 05–7 (Pl. C), accoutred exactly
after the previously described fashion ; figures of riders, one of which, vii. 2. 011 (Pl. CII), is
shown as playing on a pipe. The roped bundle represented in vii. 2. 08 (Pl. CI) had evidently